Sports Car Club of America

NEWS

Brian Peters took the STR class in San Diego (Mandy and Brad Owen photo)View Full Size

SAN DIEGO, Calif. (April 2, 2013) – For the third consecutive week, the Tire Rack SCCA Solo® program was in action, this time for the Pacific Southwest Championship Tour at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego.

The Championship Tour event was the first as a course designer for 2011 Rookie of the Year Jonathan Lugod. Though the San Diego Region course traditionally flirts with the outer limits of the rules with regard to speed, Lugod’s Saturday course was highly technical and required supreme concentration and car placement. Adjusting on the fly, Lugod’s Sunday course design mixed both elements, filling the weekend with memorable races.

Very few events, of any kind, finish closer than the 0.008-second margin of victory in the E Street Prepared class. Britt Dollmeyer drove the BlackWatchRacing.com/Thx Tim! Ford Mustang GT to what looked like a paper-thin opening day lead of 0.022 seconds over Brad Owen’s Goodspeed Performance Subaru WRX. When Sunday’s runs rolled around, Owen was able to cut into the deficit – but only by 0.014-second, leaving him just the eight thousandths of a second behind for the class win.

Street Touring R has, in just a couple of short years, become one of the most popular classes in SCCA Solo – and it’s easy to see why. May Hayter, driving the Gearheads Garage/AST/Chasecam Mazda MX-5, led the first day of action in the 21-car group, but by the third run of the day it was clear that Brian Peters’ ProParts USA Nissan 350Z was in the mix as well.

Sunday became a shootout in the class. Kevin Deitz was the first to take over the lead, climbing up the chart in the Jim Daniels/EVO School Honda S2000. Lugod’s OSGiken/Ankeny Racing Enterprises Honda S2000 used his inside knowledge to climb into the lead on his opening run just a week after surgery to remove the screws and plates in his repaired right ankle. As the later runs for each of the contenders continued to slow, it looked like Lugod would hang on – until, for the second day in a row, Peters ripped off his fastest run on the third and final time on the course.

That run lifted Peters to a 0.459-second victory over Lugod, with Deitz and Hayter following – an eternity in the tightly contested Super Touring R class. The Nissan 350Z, Honda S2000 and Mazda MX-5 left three very different cars in the top four of the class – yet another reason for the success of STR.

The Tire Rack Championship Tour – running the traditional National Tour format – returns to action with the Atlantic Championship in Dover, Del., April 27-28. The Tire Rack ProSolo Championship opens this coming weekend at the El Toro ProSolo at El Toro Airfield in Southern California for the first of three consecutive events. More information on the Tire Rack SCCA Solo Program is available at www.scca.com/Solo.

More information, including results, from the Tire Rack Southwest Championship Tour in San Diego is available at http://www.scca.com/events/index.cfm?eid=5453.

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